Title : Our visual system elaborates meager input
link : Our visual system elaborates meager input
Our visual system elaborates meager input
How is it that we perceive the world in such rich detail and texture, even though the eyes don't actually take in very much information?Painting by Aaron Draper Shattuck |
This process is necessary because to achieve our detailed vision, we don't use our eyeballs in the same way that a camera uses its lenses and sensors. For one thing, there are relatively few neurons carrying information from the retina to the back of the brain.
The magic happens in the visual cortex, which is much better connected neurally. As the brain begins to sort out the relatively meager information it receives, it elaborates the data into a richer representation. Until recently, scientists thought this process happened in a "feed forward" direction, a one-way trip from retina to visual cortex to higher vision centers in the brain.
Oak Forest by Ivan Shishkin |
But it turns out that information often loops back from higher to lower levels of processing, amplifying weak signals into richer images. This happens in real time, largely unconsciously, and sometimes inaccurately, such as when you think you thought you saw a snake, but it turn out to be a rope.
At this stage, the researchers are concentrating on the brain's preliminary decoding of the image—tasks such as edge detection and shape recognition, but they're working their way to understanding other levels of processing, such as perception of motion, color, "which occurs through an entirely different and more difficult neural pathway."
As a plein-air painter, these findings make sense to me. When I'm painting, I'm conscious of the impression of infinite detail, much of it suggested to me by my peripheral vision.
I'm also aware of how my visual system also screens out elements of a scene such as a pole or a cable or a foreground object, even from a scene I may have been looking at for over an hour. There are objects in my visual field that I'm not aware of at all until someone points them out to me or I look at a photo of the scene.
Read the article: Quanta Magazine: A Mathematical Model Unlocks the Secrets of Vision
Thanks, Keith Patton
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